Jaci Dawn

This summer, while I was Home Alone, I had a recurring thought on our life: Blessed. Oh, not so much financially, but in friends, in the location where we live (the USA), and in being able to do things we need to and love to do.

For instance, we are blessed that we are retired and my husband could go spend several weeks with his younger sister taking care of his mother’s home and visiting her in the various clinics during her ordeal. We are blessed that it was all about the medications and that an ER doctor put it all together for us after eight weeks of fear and confusion.

We are blessed that my own scare with the heart issues this year was also just medications and high cholesterol.

I was blessed to be able to take a break during my days and just sit in the backyard. No bombs going off, no hurried packing, no running for our lives from invading armies: just a suburban backyard with flowers, birds, and insects. My heart went out on a daily basis to Ukraine and Afghanistan (women in particular in the latter). We have too much junk and I made several trips to a thrift store to donate what we no longer use, never used, and don’t need – all in good condition. I put things out on the corner of the street and advertise them as “free” and people just make off with the bounty because they need or want what I no longer need or want. I never even see it go.

It’s the peace that gets me. I read the news and take on all the emotions of people oppressed. Ukraine. The Congo. Fears of the Boko Haram. Somailia. Rohinga. Myanmar. Syria. Venezuela. If I was rich, I would pour my money into helping these refugees. I am not and all I can do is pray and acknowledge that I know their pain and suffering.

I worry about the insects. Bees and wasps and pollinators. I worry about the decline in birds. I watch my neighbors put poisons into the soil and into the air. I shrink a little bit every time. But my yard is a haven.

We feed squirrels, crows, birds, and probably a few Norway rats (as long as they don’t make a home in my home, I don’t care). We provide haven for multiple species of native bees and wasps as well as yellowjackets and bald-faced hornets (don’t get me wrong: the latter two tread a very thin line with me: if they are in my path of hand-weeding, they are GONE). I don’t use herbicides, I hand-weed everything.

My days as a conservationist are drawing to a close. I am sixty-five going on sisty-six. My knees don’t work as well as they once did. I have to have a plan to get back up when I go down. My wrists hurt. It doesn’t take much to make my back ache. My days of weeding by hand are numbered. I recently hurt my Achilles tendon by stepping wrong on a piece of wood the dog left laying around in the yard. Took a week before I could come down stairs normally.

And just today, I experienced a slow-motion backward fall out of the laundry room.

But I am blessed. I have medicare. No bones broke. I swallowed arnica pills and no bruises popped up. My ego was damaged, but I am blessed.

The yellowjackets dug a nest in one of my flower beds and I couldn’t get to their nest to kill them. I weeded carefully around their nest and they tolerated me. I am blessed. Last time that happened, I got stung three times and my dog got stung several more times. This time, I saw them first.

The thing is this: it’s easy to look at the dark side of life. I lean into the window of a car of a stranger, a Veteran, to say “Thank you.” His wife asks if I still have my son. I have to reply, “He’s buried in Pensacola.” And that took my breath away. I cried in my car, alone.

I am blessed: my oldest is still living and she came to visit me this summer. My son’s ex-wife sends me photos and videos of the three children they had together. My beloved daughter-in-law was able to sell a asset this autumn that put money in the kids’ college funds. I am blessed.

There are moments I don’t feel blessed. Quite a few moments when I don’t feel blessed. I despair. The world is so messed up right now, how can any one person feel like they are blessed? Why should I be chosen to be blessed? I don’t have an answer to that. My fortunes could change in a heartbeat. Anyone’s fortunes could change in a heartbeat.

That’s why we cling to that feeling of being blessed.